Feature request: Always full + incremental to tape

[garenk]

We need to send the latest chain, incremental and full to tape daily.

Example:

Monday full backup - send to tape
Tuesday incremental backup - send Monday's full and Tuesday's incremental to tape
Wednesday incremental backup - send monday's full and Tuesdays incremental, and Wednesday's incremental to tape
So on...

In a restore situation, we don't want to rely on multiple tapes, one tape for any restore point.

[Shestakov]

Hello,
I believe it`s possible if you use file to tape job instead of backup-to-tape one. It will result in excessive space consumption.
Do you want to backup on new tape every day? Could you explain your use case?
Thanks!

[garenk]

I can't backup the latest chain with file based tape backup without some pre-scripting.

Space isn't a limiting factor for us, rather we don't want to depend on multiple tapes to perform a recovery.

[Shestakov]

You are right, this way all backups will be copied, not only the last chain.
There is no way to achieve your goal via UI as use case is not common.
The request is taken into account, but I would suggest not to copy the whole chain each time. If you want better protection, consider backup same chain to another media set with another backup to tape job.
Thanks!

[larry]

I do this everyday. I do a reverse incremental to a folder, retention set to keep 32 days then use file to tape to send 32 days with a full to tape. The last tape of the monthly is kept for 7 years. It is nice when you need to do a restore but don't know what day you need the files from, restore all then pick restore points and look. I need end of day files for 7 years so this way I use less tapes and only ever need to restore 1 tape. The two jobs will run faster than the one job to tape if you use a local disk for a cache, I posted about that before just do a search. I use 32 so if I miss or have an error some day. Every tape has 31 days back on it. I also needs two tapes sometimes and this was the only way I could make a dupe tape.

[realsuperskye]

I have a current case with a customer (03209471) where they are also interested in a feature request like this, if there could be a UI setting in Veeam to always have it query and send latest full and incrementals to tape on each tape job session.

In their case, they are currently achieving this by using a Post-Job script made by Tom Sightler that runs after each of their local backup jobs to disk, so that once backup job completes, script will search for File to Tape job with same job name+_Tape, it will query what backup files make up latest backup set (VBK + new VIBs), and will re-add these specific files as new files to send to tape, and there, each time their tape job runs, they have most recent full + latest VIBs on a single tape, so they only ever need to pull one tape for any particular restore.

In my opinion, if you have the resources to handle this sort of process, it makes any possible tape restore scenario as simple and painless as possible, and this fits better with some RPO policies I have seen being used.

Their problem currently, is that newer Veeam hotfixes/updates, seem to break the script and cause it to fail with Exit Code 1, so they have been having trouble handling this using scripting since the beginning of this year.

Just wanted to share this feedback and that I feel a setting like this would be a nice feature to add, and that some people are really trying to schedule their Veeam Tape Backups to meet some higher RPOs for Tape, and that there really isn't an easy way to handle or schedule this in Veeam currently.